The Reinventive Rewriting of The Blue Flowers: Italo Calvino Translates Raymond Queneau
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18778/2392-0718.14.13Keywords:
constrained writing, Italo Calvino, Neo-French, Raymond Queneau, reinventive translation, The Blue FlowersAbstract
Translating The Blue Flowers is a highly complex, if not impossible, task as the novel is grounded in the techniques of constrained writing. Considering Raymond Queneau a master of formal constraint, Italo Calvino does not merely translate the novel but reworks its style in order to recreate its linguistic playfulness and philosophical dimension. He thus confronts the complexity of such a highly experimental work by adopting a “reinventive” translation strategy.
This article aims to analyse the mechanisms of Calvino’s reinventive translation. Through numerous examples, the study demonstrates how the writer-translator succeeds in preserving the playful, ironic, and fantastical character of the novel by adapting proverbs, cultural references, neologisms, and wordplay. Furthermore, it examines a number of formal features that must be reconstructed in the target language so as to achieve an effect equivalent to that intended in the source text, showing how translation can become a truly creative and interpretive act.
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